It's finally here:

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36493
-Beta release



INTRODUCTION:
Imagine, you’re sitting in the dark corner there, waiting for that lone bandit to turn his back. You quietly sneak up on him from behind, weapon readied for striking death. As you take a couple of silent steps, something catches your eye to the left of you, a faint glimmer of metal upon light, but nothing is there. Could one of those assassins have found you again? No way. Going back to what you were doing, you make your strike, ending the bandit’s foul life, and stand up with a smile over your successful sneak attack. Then suddenly from the left, a sword’s blade is swung at you from out of nowhere. . . .


DESCRIPTION:
After reading through Reneer's Sneak Mod I got to reminiscing about my days with the MMORPG Dark Ages of Camelot (DAoC) and the stealth wars that would occur there with stealthy players. Reneer's mod adds an element of surprise by making NPCs have a sort of invisibility to them if your sneak skill was below theirs. Anyways, in DAoC while an assassin was on the prowl hunting or setting up an attack on an unsuspecting player, there was always the chance that another stealther was nearby, possibly hunting you, or after seeing you attack someone while they were waiting, ambush the ambusher (so to speak).

While it would be hard to completely recreate that experience, this mod seeks to do so as much as it can. There are a total of 15 different assassins, all of which have unique armor and weaponry, all who have only one goal . . . to kill you. They will track and hunt you down and catch you off guard quite often. They will be quite a challenge at any level, so be prepared for some rough fights. There will also be a chance for more than one to appear, even up to four a time, but just one of these guys will be more than enough. Further, there is even a chance that they will have back up hidden from your sight that will attack you when you least expect it. You may even want a companion with you at times. Depending on your stealth skill, you may see them coming and you can hide from their sights and try to get the jump on them instead. If they have a greater stealth skill than you, you will not see them coming, but don’t fret because their skill will vary at times. Sometimes their sneak level will be higher, other times it’ll be much lower. Why? Because sometimes an assassin can mess up and reveal his/her position.

Obviously, having permanent or long term life detection on all the time would spoil the fun in being caught by surprise when the assassins attempt to get the jump on you. I would discourage you from using such enchantments, but it also wouldn’t be a bad idea to use a temporary spell every so often if you think you’re about to be attacked.

To start the mod, seek out Artueus in the Imperial City Talos Plaza. If you can’t find him, he should seek you out after a few minutes of being there.

Also, as a warning, there are some heavy poly counts and high resolution textures on some of the models and could affect the performance of your computer. The benefit of course is a high quality looking weapon or armor. For comparison, I run a 2.33GHz Quad Core Intel PC with 4gb ram and with a Geforce 8800 GTS 512mb video card on a 64bit Vista OS and do not see a frame rate issue at all.


OTHER MOD REQUIREMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS:
-Latest patch for Oblivion.
-OBSE – latest version.
-OBSE -Elys- Universal Silent Voice

-Reneer’s NPC Sneak Mod or Haldars Mod Pack: Realistic Sneak for NPCs - for keeping the assassin NPCs invisible when they are searching for you. This mod is really required, but the mod will still run without this. But without it, this mod would be sort of pointless.
-NPC Friendly Fire - for keeping chaos within the cities at bay. Because of my mod, there may be some fighting within the city. Sometimes, you’ll get help from the citizens and guards; sometimes they hit each other accidently. Once that happens, chaos ensues and everyone begins killing each other. This mod should help prevent that.
-Unnecessary Violence - for dual wielding action, since a lot of the assassins will be DW’ing. It is not required, but makes NPC’s a little bit more versatile with their offhand weaponry.
-Also keep an eye out for Unnecessary Violence2: Taking Action. The updated Unnecessary Violence will really make the NPC battles more exciting and make them even more versatile.
-A companion of some sort is suggested, especially for the times when more than one assassin shows up. Too many mods to list here. Do a search.
-Stickier Enemy Targeting - if you use a companion. This wonderful little mod causes anything that is attacking you to switch targets on occasion with you and your companion/pet/mount instead of ignoring you altogether and heading straight for them.


VERSION
-Future versions/releases – background history of each assassin and a quest. Future fleshing out of a plotline.
-V0.9b - beta. Fixed several missing variables including the spawn timer, and AI mistakes missed from alpha release. Also toned down difficulty of NPCs by lowering levels by 5. Boss NPCs still remain at 10 above player level however. Special thanks to nenina on gamesas forums and Sticz from TESNexus.
V0.8a – initial alpha release.


INSTALLATION:
Simply copy the Data folder into the Oblivion folder, merge the folders when asked, and activate the esp with OBMM or the likes.

As always, it is a good idea to keep a back up of both your save files and the Oblivion.esm. It’s only precautionary because this mod does nothing to the esm, but it just makes good general sense when using mods anyways.

UNINSTALLING:
Deactivate the Stealth Wars esp, do a clean save, then delete the associated Stealth Wars BSA and the esp itself.

BUGS/CONFLICTS:
-Bug: scripts on the assassins’ weapons are supposed to disable them if they are dropped. On occasion, they do not kick in and an assassin may leave a weapon behind when they leave after being defeated. If this occurs, you could pick it up and do what you want, but really, you should disable it in the console. Otherwise, you’ll be holding a duplicate once the assassin is enabled again. If you don’t want to do that, you could consider it a “trophy” if you will and display it in one of your houses.

There were instances during my testing when the mod "stalls" and the assassin NPCs won’t look for you. This occurred most often when Fast Traveling. It might be due to my load order and other mods interfering or it may be a flaw with the Oblivion AI engine, which I suspect it is, but whatever the case may be, usually travelling to Weye will reset it, and you may find yourself being ambushed there as well. Of course, restarting the mod will also work. I may try to correct this on a future version.

-Conflict: during testing, Adrenaline Fueled Combat v2 was acting strange by displaying odd messages in game mode and I had to disable it. I can only assume it has something to do with my scripts running at the same time as AFC2. Therefore, it is possible this mod conflicts with AFC2, although I’m unsure as to why. If you use AFC2, I’d like to know your experience with using it and my mod.

Please report anything else you may find.

CREDITS:
This is going to be a huge list because there are many resources used from other mods put into this one, thus this is a team work project put together by me. The credit listing is in mixed or no particular order. There are many meshes and textures with edits/alterations that were done by me personally. (Also foremost, check the Legal section for using parts of this mod for your own mods or for uploading elsewhere. This is critical!)

First, special acknowledgment to the following people who, although have no single (physical) part in the mod, have helped me quite a bit and in a sense have their hands in the mod’s construction. They were very instrumental in the mod’s development and I would not have been able to pull this off without them.

-The Vyper, DaMage, vometia, InsantiySorrow – for advice and sharing your knowledge of AI package, scripting, and the CS inner workings.
-Alithelord, CDM_, ghastley, JDFan, JRoush, LHammonds, Phitt, showler, ThumperZ, utumno – for scripting advice, info, or other relevant help.
-Corethian – for mesh alteration advice.
A very special thank you to everyone listed here for your support and advice!


Second, the actual meshes and textures or other tools from other mods (listed as their respective mod names)used in this mod are as follows:

Armors and clothing:
-Nightshade by skeleton K
-Underdark: Drow Armor by AlienSlof
-Andragorn Weapons and Armor by Andragorn
-Stealth Armor by Taylorsd
-Shdw Armor Pack1 and 2 by Andragorn
-Frostleaf Leather Armor by Spindrift
-Sneak Gear by Alex Scorpian
-Druid Armors and Weapons by tumbajamba
-Hashshashin Armor by Dimitri Mazieres
-Ranger Armor and Light Daedric Armor by Dimitri Mazieres
-Battlemage Armory by Eryen
-Chitin Armor by Hel Borne
-Gray Fox Leather by Gwydeon
-Werewolf Hunter by DreadNaught/Jcarl904
-Weapon Tool Belts by Lonewolf_kai
-Hemingwey Capes by Hemingwey
-Forestheart by klarre
-Armamentarium by Trollf

Weapons and offhanders(left handed weapons):
-Slitterblade by Gizmodian
-Raizan by ant_4everlove
-Nicos Scimitars by Nicoroshi
-Copperthorn by Gizmodian
-Blackluster by hide
-texture fix by Sociop
-True Ayleid Armor by Iomir
-The Sword of Lightning with Sound by electionis
-Angel Slayerr by Jured
-Caliburn by soifon
-Edocs Serpent Dagger Resource by Edocsil
-Nepher and Bepher by Plipo
-Myths and Legends2 by templargfx/GrimDeath
-Razorponys Fatalis Sword by Razorpony
-Vicious Heart by Gizmodian
-Assassins Blade by Hobbs/Nicoroshi
-The Relics of Fire and Ice by Gizmodian
-Coolmans Dagger Collection by Coolman
-The Heretic Blade by ArrenMog
-Heretic Reavers and Mithril Sentinels by Dominick Cyromonde
-Dragon Bow by Mr Smiles aka Lamayo
-Dread Knight Armor and Weapons by jojjo
-pale_riders Armory of the Divine Guardian by pale_rider
-Nexon Armory by Nexon
-The Forgotten Signs: Pegasus by Gorgonzola3000
-Arcan Ice Claymore by Sterlock
-Pure Steel Blade by EuGenius
- sparkle effect by amnes
-Talon of Akatosh by Nicoroshi
-Frostmourne and Lich Kings Armor by jojjo
-Dragon Claw Sword and Shield by jojjo
-Romuska Fantasy Store by VanillaBeans
-Haelia Latta Sword by Ancestral Ghost
-Alonso and Lexx Armory by Alonso and Lexx
-Gizmodians Blades by Gizmodian

Thirdly, the Misc:
-LHammonds for the Readme Generator, which this readme is based on.
-gamesas for textures, meshes, the CS, and the game.
-GIMP, Nifscope, and Blender for the wonderful tools.
-Dark Ages of Camelot and Reneer for the inspiration.
-All else who lent ideas and support.
-God for being the Ultimate Modder!

If I missed something specific as far as credit goes please inform me so that I may give due credit.

LEGAL/LICENSING/ETC.
You may NOT modify, use in other mods, or redistribute any part of this mod without prior permission given by me. Otherwise such actions are strictly prohibited. Again, you MUST contact me if you wish to use anything within this mod or if you wish to upload the mod on another site. Several of the authors of the meshes/textures used have explicit rules governing their work that are featured in this mod, including any alterations or mods of my own. If I do give permission for any of the above, you must also ask permission of the original authors for their base work. Many of the listed meshes/textures have modifications done by me, so even if you have permission for the original work by the base author, you must have my permission for the alterations I have done. If there are any deviations from the above, I will not hesitate to pull this mod from public use and take punitive action with administration where necessary.

AUTHOR’S NOTES
You can contact me on the TESNexus website with the user name Lonewolf_kai if you have questions, concerns, comments, etc. I would prefer you to use the commenting section for troubleshooting or reporting any bugs. Sorry about the wall of text for the description/readme, but it was necessary.

I encourage you to make comments about the mod. Tell everyone who your favorite assassin is or anything exciting that happened while playing the game (with this mod active, there are bound to be WTF moments). Post pictures too! I personally have a tie for my favorite assassin. Can you guess which ones?

Also, it wouldn’t hurt to look at the works done by those in the credit listing and give them thanks for their work as well. I personally am very grateful that they have made them.

I hope you enjoy this, and, if you think it great, don’t forget to endorse it; of course, Kudos are always welcomed as well. A vote for file of the month is nice too.

-Lonewolf
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me….”
Psalm 23:4

:drool:


I'll....err....be back shortly.
bliviongate:

Wow! Been looking forward to this. Immediate download. Thanks!

Is there a quest explaining why 15 assassins are coming after you?

There is a short explanation. There might be plans on fleshing this out later.

Oh joy! Congratulation on the release!

By the way, edit your sig to show that OMGLUL Stealth Wars is RELz!! :ahhh:

This has potential for mayhem in the form of innocent npcs dying because they were near and took your side. This could result in a Market District missing marketers, a fighters guild with no members, a Skingrad full of guards and no civilians, etc.

I haven't really been following this mod* so I'm not sure ifthis has been brought up, but have you considered having the Assassins possess different M.O.s, and motivations? For example:

One might kill a guard, dress up as up as them, and then appear as just a generic guard on a normal patrol, but as soon as you get close to them they either try to get in a quick instant kill, or accuse you of some crime in order make the real guards join in attacking you (this might be a bit to prone to problems, given how wonky the crime system is, but it would be pretty funny to turn it around on him by paying the fine or going to jail, surprising him because he expected you to resist, and then as he's escorting you to the jail/castle you can get the the jump on him while he tries to think up a new plan.)

The obvious powerful Mythic Dawn assassin... maybe make it a bit more interesting than the vanilla ones by maybe giving him a special"squad leader Xivilai" summon that summons 3 Xivilai which each summon Clannfears... or something like that.

Bow assassins that remain hidden and try to snipe you from afar with bows and poisons.

Assassin that steals one random potion and replaces it with a powerful poison with the same name (don't know how you'd hide the effect though, and there's the fact that it would be separate from the stack... maybe could be done with scripting) The poison wouldn't be instant kill because that would likely be too annoying, maybe just a powerful damage health+ paralyze effect followed by the assassin revealing themselves and attacking you.

An assassin named Simyaz that tries to kill you by burning down your house (jk)

An over-dramatic assassin that simply demands a fair duel in order to compare skill( pretty simple, but I suppose you could have possible ways of making the duel unfair for your opponent (ie: sabotage), and maybe the possibility of showing mercy when you've won, which might make him just try again later)

For motivation you could create some deeper characters for the assassins, and also make it where some of the extremely skilled ones won't bother you at level 1. Some might have preconceived motivations (Follower of Dagon that senses your destiny, stalker/psychopath, random thugs/muggers), while others would only start pursuing you after you meet certain conditions both good and bad. (high/low fame, completing certain quests, killing certain people, killing lot's of guards, working for certain people, etc.)

Sorry if anything I suggested has already been brought up, or is far too complex to actually work... I'm just musing, and your mod seems plenty interesting as it is already.


*(one of those occasions where you see a mod's title do a very light skim, and then decide it doesn't interest you without realizing what the mod actually is)



NPC Friendly fire is a recommended mod to prevent this

Congratulations on the release lonewolf_kai!

Thanks anithinks. I just hope it was worth it.

Phoenix, I probably won't do that because the assassins belong to the same guild, and the guild as a whole is trying to take the PC out. I might do an update or addon that explains who this guild is in more detail and background info on each of them. You have some pretty good ideas, but I probably won't get into doing that. I've about had it with scripting. This simple mod was more than enough for me.

Nenina, Phoenix pretty much answered it. I have a recommendation for preventing that.

Ah, good. If you don't mind, I'm going to PyFFI the meshes then. I also want to use this with Unnecessary Violence 2 and Kuertee's Skill Based Damaged Modifiers. Unnecessary Violence 2 may or may not interfere with the scripts attached to the assassins, just wanted to sample it. The reason for Kuertee's is because of the sheer mountains of health everyone has at higher levels and the impotent damage due to weapon scaling and impenetrable armor. This results in vanilla combat that becomes a war of attrition. I look forward to seeing how badly the assassins personally hate the player by how severe the frowns on their faces. I say this because it is entirely possible to have an npc smile while in combat with the player. This while being lost in Miscarcand while fighting undead, some hooded murderer capitalizes on the situation and turns a routine skull hunt into an unannounced showdown that strikes fast and ends in blood.

Sounds good. Let me know if Kuertee's mod conflicts. I'm not sure about UV2 though. Is it out yet? I run UV1 and there's no problem there. PyFFI'ing the meshes should cause no problems either, or at least I don't see why it would.

Hmm, is there a prerequisite I've missed? Clean install with KotN, Shivering Isles, etc., and only Stealth Wars and Skycaptain's Friendly Fire mod activated. Used OBSE Loader. The problem is that there have been no assassin attacks though I've used the wait command for a game week and fast travel. Assassins don't attack during these modes, only real time?

Ah, I think I see what it is. Some assassins have No Low Level Processing checked. I unchecked them, you WANT them to have low level processing so that their routines are run or switched to when the player is not in the loaded cell. This isn't a terrible strain because there are only 15 of them for the game to keep track of. That way, I think I will run into LionFury ( he was checked ) at some old fortress.

I think Mantis looks really good, it's like a Morrowind style Morag Tong. My opinion on the difficulty you've set for my painfully powerleveled spellsword is that you are cruel and merciless. This is fine for the emperor of evil, but I am pressed to go through all the armor and set them all to 1 AR or less. They can look good and not be tanks. This is to give me a chance against what otherwise would be level 25-30 immortal gods sealed in the ultimate armor who can kill me by looking at me with their 134 Agility, 150 Strength, and 104 Speed. For now, I've put their level offset to 0 instead of 10. It's great how they switch weapons.

It makes an intense action fight and makes me wonder what weapon they have picked for me, or that they are just prepared for any target. I don't feel right about the Resist Magicka 75 and the Absorb Spell 60.

I don't play a sneak character, but this is a great mod, since I've always wondered why there weren't assassins trying to kill the "hero".
Thanks!

Looking at this line in the script attached to the main quest:

If (SWTimer1 >= 120)

This controls the amount of time between spawns, so that 21600 would be a spawn every 6 hours, 43200 would be every 12 hours, etc.

Thanks for the support. I hope you enjoy the mod.




Opps. You've found two mistakes now that I overlooked. :whistling:

All NPCs are supposed to be set to low level processing. I thought I had that fixed.

That was a testing amount of time on the timer variable. But, the timer doesn't work correctly atm. I left that in there for a future version fix which I'll be uploading soon.

Sorry about the toughness of them. They are supposed to be very hard to kill and extremely challenging. I may have set them too hard.

Thanks for the feedback, especially the troubleshooting part.

Can't wait for an update! I absolutely love the concept of this.
Oh, and is there a level limit before they attack or will I get brutally slaughtered at lower levels?

Are they static leveled? To make it challenging, but passable you could always set it to a Player Level + X thing.

Also, I'm unsure, after you kill through the 15 of them, is that the end of the mod, or will they recycle? and how often do they spawn, if that timer wasn't working? every 12 or so hours would seem like the mod would end rather quickly.

There are also two other mods which do something similar...they have assassins in set locations that then spawn when you pass them, sort of like little ambushes, the first mod was done by Lynges (sp?), and the second was an adaptation of that. For the second one a search of "Morag Tong" on nexus will likely bring it up.

What the adaptation did to kind of bring in some story, at times comedy, was to place a note on each of the assassins, these would sort of hint as why you are being targeted, and/or the personal motives for taking the work of the assassin. Perhaps it is something to consider?

Anyway, looking forward to being hunted in my next build!

If I can remember correctly, they are set to +10 levels above the player, they also have some pretty high quality gear too. You might get slaughtered at low levels, and they pretty much come after you right away after speaking to Artueus. I may also tone down the +levels to something around 5 maybe. But I need feedback before I do that. I wanted this mod to be a 20+ level thing, so that's where I really need the feedback for.




They level with the player, which is currently set at +10. Two of the assassins, which are considered the bosses of the guild are at +15, I think. I know some people don't like that, but the idea is that they adapt to you as you level up. This also makes the mod last longer.

The way the NPCs work is that when you defeat them, they disappear, sort of like a ninja escape sort of thing. I wanted to use a smoke screen effect for this, but couldn't really find one for it. It's a "flee and live today so that you can fight tomorrow" type sentimentality. The ones you defeat will eventually come back again.

I am actually aware of the mods you speak of, and a third one as well, and also a fourth that is intergrated into a larger mod. They all basically have the same sort of inner workings like the way you described. Mine is done completely different. My mod is not dependent on where you are in order for the NPCs to be triggered. They literally hunt you down actively from their starting point, no matter where you are.

My future plans for the guild's story will be similar to the notes on each, except I'll probably do something else, either journals, reports, or something; that is all dependent on a big IF too.

Version 0.9b up for grabs now. Should have fixed problem areas, timer, and toned down difficulty.

It's not the mods fault that assassins arrive in groups. In my experience, it's how the packages were intended to work, probably to keep following companions together if the player fast travels. If all 15 of the assassins somehow all spawned at once, each at different locations, somehow they would find the player at roughly the same time if the player fast traveled. Downloading the new version, but now I have gathered a large list of mods. I can't say anything more about their damage, as I am now using Kuertee's Skill-Based and Class-Based Damage Modifiers, but I may remove it if the assassins are godly again. I haven't seen any crashes due to this mod, mostly fun when kill one only to miss looting the corpse by a fraction of a second. My only real gripe is that there is no explanation for how they came back to life after being relieved of their lives. Time to play it now.



That was Player Hunters Fame and Infamy. The author had planned a massive update on it until they realized that all the stupid, unnecessary stuff they were adding ( a useless fort, a unicorn, trophies, healing good npcs, etc. ) imbalanced things greatly. By then it became too weird and work on it stopped.

Oh, well they are actually not supposed to be looted at all. The reason is tied in with why they keep coming back to life. I sort of explained it above in response to Treaka. They always escape at the last minute before they die. I wanted to do a smoke screen type effect like the cliche ninja escape. I haven't found the effect yet, but have some ideas that I will put in later for it. For now, just imagine them using a really powerful invisiblity spell that they can only use to escape. :unsure2:

The other mods that have assassin/player hunters that I was also thinking about was one that had the Nevarine (sp?) from morrowind and his companions, a ninja-esque type mod that had ninja ambush you (it came out not too long ago), and the other one within the larger mod was TIE, I think.

I haven't tested this mod with damage/armor modifiers. It was mainly made with maximum compatabilty in mind and used vanilla settings. If needed you could always remove the +5 and +10 levels of the NPCs with the CS.

mod is huuuuuugeee. awesome though. can someone make a video for me to watch?

Cripes! They are one-hitting me, blocked no less. It's not so much the weapon damage, which is still godly with their insane level strength, but that the bonus damage is dealt instantly instead of over 2 or 3 seconds. The only way is to not ever be hit / staggered. Keep in mind that I am using Kuertee's Skill-Based and Attribute-Based Damage Modifiers so that my arrows are much stronger, yet their armor rating is so impenetrable that they are less assassin and more unholy warrior fit to wade into battle against tons of Imperial Legion Soldiers, and their speed is as if the armor weighed nothing. I would understand this if their armor was just clothing. As it is, I'm certain that six OOO 1.3 Spectral Warriors would lose to just one of the assassins.

Anyway, you said you had planned the assassins to escape. What if they cast an escape spell when their health reaches below 10% of their base health? The script would be on a token ring and it would look like this:


And the spell script would look like this:


Anyway, just to keep them like assassins who strike hard I am setting all their armor to 0.01 AR, halving their weapon damage, massively reducing their bonuses, and giving them all permanent Drain Health -200. That way I can face three or four of them and it feels like I am avoiding death, rather than battling bosses with olympic mountains of health. It is fun this way and the assassins look great, better than me, unfortunately. But I understand that these assassins are meant for characters who are already strong and have plenty of buffs.